31 March 2016

When Progressives Get Religion

Columbia University linguist John McWhorter penned anessay last year which he defended on CNN:

In 2015, among educated Americans especially, Antiracism—it seriously
merits capitalization at this point—is now what any naïve, unbiased
anthropologist would describe as a new and increasingly dominant
religion. It is what we worship, as sincerely and fervently as many
worship God and Jesus and, among most Blue State Americans, more so.

Far-fetched?

For those who insist that religion must include a divine being, not so fast. Communism scholar Peter Sperlich:

Supernaturalism
and specific deities are common, but not essential elements of religious
systems. ... Several indisputably “traditional
religions” have managed to function perfectly well without specific deities;
for example, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Jainism.

... If the chief characteristic of a religion is the belief
in the reality of an unseen, it matters not whether this unobservable entity is
a specific deity, the “spirit of history,” or the “laws of nature.” (1)

But psychology tells us that the conservative is far more apt to traditional religious belief than the progressive.So is McWhorter just blowing smoke?

As it happens, he is not the first to test the waters of leftist ideology-cum-religion. The 20th century's greatest progressive idea, Communism, has been intriguing scholarsfor the last 100 yearsfor itslikeness tospiritual belief.The millions of pages written on the subject have taught us this if nothing else: The
leftist, in his own way, seems just as prone to religious thinking as the rightist.

So to test McWhorter's assertion, let us take a deeper look at how the progressive has succumbed to the religious aspects of both Communism and Multiculturalism. Are there any real parallels? And what can this tell us about the pitfalls to which the leftist mind is vulnerable?

I. LIVING OUR FAITH

If it is indeed a faith, how does the committed Anti-racist / Multiculturalist
live it?

We tend today to think they were just mouthing the words, but many early
Communists were in fact fervent believers:

Catherine Merridale notes that “It would be unwise to assume much love for Communism among the rural
population as a whole, but where the new ideas struck root, they could be
embraced with a fanaticism that calls to mind the Inquisition or the new jihad.
This kind of ideology was really faith...”

To Dariusz Tolczyk, a literary scholar, it was more “difficult for a
[true believer] to renounce his belief in the Revolution in the face of
imminent destruction” than to accept his own destruction. If life is only
meaningful within the context of […] Communism, then living without it is worse
than dying for it.(3)

Similarly, the zeal of today's multiculturalists cannot be doubted. Professions of faith and confessions of sin are pouring forth right and left. English teacher
Kim Radersma at the (taxpayer-funded) White Privilege Conference in
Madison, WI:

'I will never be recovered by my
alcoholism, to use the metaphor. I have to every day wake up and acknowledge
that I am so deeply imbedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my
body that I have to choose every day to do anti-racist work and think in an
anti-racist way.

'We've been raised to be good. "I'm a good white
person," and yet to realize I carry within me these dark, horrible thoughts
and perceptions is hard to admit. And yet like the alcoholic, what's the
first step? Admitting you have a problem.'

'My own capacity for leadership perpetuates the whiteness within me,
beckoning a return trip to look in the mirror. Perhaps I can’t fully suppress
all the whiteness within me, and maybe that’s for the better. The process is
the task, the journey has no end, and I will always be white.'

'When we think of
racism, there’s a tendency to think of just the overt, violent sort. “Oh,
no! I’m not racist.” But racism is often quieter and more insidious. So,
here are some ways in which I have discovered that I am racist. It shames me.
[...]

-I
had food delivered and the Latino delivery guy spoke perfect English. I was
stunned.

-Being unsurprised at the fact that my friend plays violin beautifully,
because she’s Chinese. They’re good at things like that.
Right?

'I am one of the organizers of last week’s Race is not a Party protest. I am straight. I am male. I am white
(mostly). I am comfortably middle-class. [...] It’s obvious. I am a racist. I
am a sexist. I wish I wasn’t.But I am. I understand
racism—not completely, of course, but I have a good idea of what it means, what
it looks like. I know it’s wrong. But I’m still a racist.'

Like the old passion plays, confession even comes in theatrical form, as seen
recently in Barbados where a group of Whites admitted their guilt to acts
committed hundreds of years before they were born:

Always and everywhere, sacrifice has been a part of religious
experience. Christianity forewent both human and animal sacrifice in favor of the eucharist and self-sacrifice (i.e. fasting for Lent). And in Communism? Nanci Adler:

If the Gulag experience is perceived as brutalized forced labor, it is
repression. If it is perceived as a “labor of love,” according to Frankl’s definition of meaning, it “ceases to be
suffering” and veers in the direction of devotion.(3)

Adler
also quotes Olga Shatunovskaia, an early Bolshevik who, despite 17 years
in the Gulag, went on to work for the Party:

'It now seems like wild
nonsense to me, but at the time we thought that this sacrifice was absolutely
necessary for the good of the world proletariat. Revolutionary legality was
higher than moral legality.' (3)

Amy Biehlarrived in South Africa in 1993 as an exchange student on a
Fulbright Fellowship …. She wanted to
fight apartheid, which she passionately opposed. … On August 25, 1993, Biehl was driving three
Black companions through Cape Town’s Guguletu Township.

A mob of toyi-toying
supporters of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), fresh from a raucous political
meeting, attacked her car …. As she tried to flee, stumbling, across the road,
she was surrounded by a throng of Blacks who repeatedly kicked, stoned, and
stabbed her.

After being killed by those she had come to help, her death was fêted as
a martyrdom.

Amy’s father, demonstrating how thoroughly he shared his daughter’s
anti-racialist convictions, shook hands with her murderers and encouraged their
release.… Nelson Mandela said of Biehl,
“She made our aspirations her own and lost her life in the turmoil of our
transition as the new South Africa struggled to be born in the dying moments of
apartheid.”

Simply put, the blessed state
of multi-ethnic cohabitation must be attained at all costs. Old Bolsheviks
thought the sacrifice of so many lives was 'absolutely necessary,' and our
believers today think the same.

'I'm concerned that this
increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim
soldiers ... Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a
strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a
casualty, I think that’s worse.'

Such believers are thus not bothered by foreign men pimping their daughters or raping their women. They're indifferent to the thousands of Whites forced into violent Afro schools
and
neighborhoods, or the endless white suffering and death at the
hands of random
black criminals. According to our new priests, these sacrifices are just a bump on the road to a future paradise (or even a penance for past sins), and so must continue.

Having mixed raced kids is regarded as the height of piety, and you see
certain middle-class mothers with a new African husband gushing about her
little brown ‘jewel’… to make them appear good;
holier-than-thou; righteous; and pious – the new high moral
ground……the new religion, the snobbery of the multicult.

Failing that, one of
the most visible acts of piety the faithful can perform is to adopt a child as racially
distant from themselves as possible. Celebrities have led by example:

To hasten our rainbow-colored future, the faithful are also showing their piety
by importing as many 'refugees' as possible-- the more racially distant, the
better. Thus white Christians from Ukraine are low on the piety scale, mestizo
children from Guatemala higher, and black Muslims from Somalia at the very
top.

(It is also of note that in this case, Multiculturalism and Christianity have joined forces, as the most zealous sponsors of these unassimilable newcomers are the Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, and Evangelical Church World Service and World Relief Corp.)

Having seen how the true believer lives his faith, let us now examine the doctrine on which his belief is based.

II. DOGMA

On what doctrine does the true believer base his faith?

1) Doctrine

All religions have their holy writ. Christianity has its Bible; Communism had Marx:

In the words of Dudley Young, "The gospel according to Marx,
with amendments and glosses by Lenin and Stalin, is a gospel of hope and
courage, offering to its adherents a measure of certainty and assurance amid
the political and personal defeats of day-to-day life." (1)

Berdyaev was harsher:

Soviet philosophical literature as a whole … is most unenlightened, most
fanatical and stereotyped. The dogmatism of this literature exceeds anything
that has occurred in Christian theology.(2)

While individuals differ, biological differences between races are
small. There is no reason to believe that one race is by nature so much more
intelligent, endowed with great will power, or emotionally more stable than
another, that the difference would materially influence its culture. (Race and
Progress)

The doctrine flourished during the war years
and afterwards:

It was really in the 1930s
and 1940s that a significant and powerful group of scientists
... argued instead that culture, and not some natural essence, was the
most significant determinant of human behavior and capabilities.

Gould's own degree of bias is unusual in a
work by a scientist. … The Mismeasure of Man ends up as a sophisticated piece
of political propaganda, rather than as a balanced scientific analysis.

In effect, we see here Lysenkoism risen
again: an effort to outlaw a field of science because it conflicts with a
political dogma. ... A chilling atmosphere is quite sufficient to
prevent funding agencies, investigators, and graduate students from exploring a
taboo area.

Lysenko and Gould: Two peas in a pod?

He also saw it becoming canon before his
eyes:

The crucial lesson to be drawn from the
case of Stephen Jay Gould is the danger of propagating political views under
the guise of science. Moreover, this end was furthered, wittingly or not, by
the many [positive] reviewers... For these reviews reflected enormous relief: A
voice of scientific authority now assures us that biological diversity does not
set serious limits to the goal of equality…

'Structural racism,' too,
has its holy writ. One of its high priests is Derrick Bell, and his doctrine is known as 'Critical Race Theory.' J.J. Pyle:

While
mainstream civil rights reformers assume that racism is a product of ignorance
and can be overcome by education, critical race theorists insist that racism
is pervasive and immutable, and "lies at the very heart of American--and
western--culture."

To critical race theorists, white racism is a
"defect in the collective unconscious," a cultural phenomenon that
automatically "reproduces hierarchy" even in the absence of conscious
discrimination. In a racist society, everyone is either an
"outsider" or an "insider," a "victim" or a
"perpetrator."

2) Indoctrination

With doctrine comes indoctrination. We must be given a new way of thinking about our past and present. The Church in Europe had a real genius for
taking pagans' tales about themselves and melding them into Christian
narrative. (The date of Christmas,veneration of saints, and the cult of Mary are but a few examples.)So, of course, did Communism. Peter Grothe, on East Germany's school system:

It is evident, then, that not only contemporary
history, but the descriptions of the distant past, also, are couched in proper
Marxist interpretation. … An example: "The poverty of the first
Franciscan monks was only a show to win the trust of the poor people."

… A description of Paris
says, "The city streets were widened in the 19th century in order to
enable the ruling classes to turn soldiers loose on the workers in the wider
streets."One geography text
says only capitalists in America have bathtubs. Another geography book has a
picture of "a typical American street." (It is taken in a New York
slum area.) (5)

Like the holy men of Christianity or of Communism, our new priests have found a way to take ethnic Euros' past
accomplishments and windthem into a new narrative: 'White Privilege.' This creed is now being taught in
school districts from Baltimore
to Portland. What is it?

The mission statement of PEG, founded in 1992 by Glenn Singleton, is
fairly straightforward: “At Pacific Educational Group we believe systemic
racism is the most devastating factor contributing to the diminished capacity
of all children, especially black children, to achieve at the highest levels,
and contributes to the fracturing of the communities that nurture and support
them.”

'There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege
plays out in our lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with
me until the day white supremacy is erased from society.'

Grothe again, on Communist schoolwork:

Pulitzer Prize winner Herblock, the political cartoonist, once depicted
a Moscow schoolboy returning home from class and being asked by his father,
"Well, what did you unlearn today?"The cartoon was no exaggeration.
Lesson material must not only be learned in the DDR; some also must be
"unlearned."

Imagine Miss Jones getting up before her sixth grade
class in Paoli, Indiana, and saying, "Remember what we learned last week,
class, about Abraham Lincoln being a great, wise, and humanitarian President?
Well, it's not altogether true. Since last week, I learned from our government
that he was actually a murderer, a deceiver, and a villain of American history.

And so don't read your textbooks on Lincoln, since they have a wrong
interpretation. Next year, we will receive revised textbooks which will clarify
Lincoln's role in history." Such an occurrence in America would be so
unthinkable that it must be banished to the realm of fantasy.(5)

Grothe in 1958 could not, of course, have imagined our soviet-like present. Today's
college professors and students are indeed repeating history, this time as farce.America's founders and
seminal figures--too pale, stale, and
male--are to be swept away. UC Berkeley's 'Occupy
the Syllabus' has proclaimed:

We have major concerns about social theory courses in which white men
are the only authors assigned. These courses pretend that a minuscule fraction
of humanity are the only people
to produce valid knowledge about the world. This is absurd. …

Furthermore, the
classroom environment felt so hostile to women, people of color, queer folks
and other marginalized subjects that it was difficult for us to focus on the
course material. Sometimes, we were so uncomfortable that we had to leave the
classroom in the middle of lecture. … We must dismantle the tyranny of the
white male syllabus.

Our true believers now seem to be in a Stalinist race to see who can erase history
the fastest.Yale's Calhoun
College, Princeton's Woodrow
Wilson School, Georgetown's Mulledy
and McSherry Halls are all up for re-naming due to past connections
with slavery. The very name of Lebanon Valley College's Lynch
Hall (that of a beloved ex-president) has to go--it gives
black students chills.

Clearly utopian in nature are these characteristics of the (future)
communist society: ... the ability of
any and all persons to run the machinery of government, the distribution of
goods and services based only on need, the withering away of the state, the
absence of all exploitation and alienation, the harmony/identity of individual
and collective interests, .... (1)

If Communists were 'hard' utopians, today's anti-racists may be said to be 'soft' ones. Reinhold Niebuhr:

The difference between a soft and hard utopianism is
that the former dreams of achieving an ideal society of uncoerced justice through
the historical development of altruistic as against egoistic purposes;
while the latter [i.e. Communism] claims to embody a social system in which this miracle has
already taken place.(6)

Multiculturalism's hoped-for utopia has links to Communism's—perfect
equality, brotherhood of Man--with a curious, newly added feature: The end of 'White Supremacy.'

This ardent desire to see one's own ethnic group weaken or vanish in order to bring about peace on earth may be unprecedented in human history. What was once limited to fringe academics...

A school-wide questionnaire at Western Washington
University asked the community “How do we make sure that in future years
‘we are not as white as we are today?’”

“Every year, from this stage and at this time, you
have heard me say that, if in decades ahead, we are as white as we are
today, we will have failed as university,” [President Bruce] Shepard said
in the 2012 speech. “In the decades ahead, should we be as white as we are
today, we will be relentlessly driven toward mediocrity; or, become a sad
shadow of our current self,” he wrote.

The 'end of whiteness' doctrine has also swept political leaders of all stripes. Even after Tony Blair's attempt
to forcibly convert the UK to the faith was revealed...

Andrew Neather, a former
adviser to Tony Blair, said the [mass immigration] policy was designed to ‘rub the Right’s nose in
diversity’. He said there was ‘a driving political purpose: … to make the UK
truly multicultural.’

'The vision of a country of
different cultures and different faiths mixing together is the right one. That
is not to say you don’t have problems at certain points, but those problems are
to be overcome without losing the essence of what has actually allowed this
country’s people to get on and do well.’

To Clinton, an America
without a white majority is a worthy destiny. As he put it a year ago to a
small gathering of black columnists, “Along with our founding, which was an act
of genius, and the freeing of slaves in the Civil War and the long civil rights
movement, this will arguably be the third great revolution of America, if we
can prove that we literally can live without having a dominant European
culture.”

'There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century
idea and we are trying to transition it into the 21st century, and we are going
to do it with multi-ethnic states.'

'We [British] still nurse a
sense of our homogeneity and difference from others. And that’s precisely what
the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine.'

And at the truly ethnomasochistic end of the spectrum:

'Everywhere you saw nothing but this superb brown
color that only the loveliest human beings have. ... Personally,
I don't want to be Western. I don't want to be a white Catholic; I'd
rather be a black atheist.'

'Look at all the
beautiful colours the women here are wearing. Within ten years this is what it
is going to look like all over Europe. Back home it’s so bleak and dreary, the
colours are devoid of life. ...'

--Swedish
Finance Minister Anders Borg on a state visit to Lagos, Nigeria

Swept up in their own anti-racist fervor, from schoolteachers to political leaders, ethnic NW Euros may be the first group in human
history to actively wish for their own demise. Will this wish be granted? And are we sure that Utopia will follow?Having considered (1) the believer's acts of faith and (2) his doctrine and its sources, let us now explore how he keeps heresy at bay.

III. FIGHTING HERESY

How does the Anti-racist keep his doctrine pure?

1) Science
Denialism

One striking similarity between Christianity and
Communism is their frequent aversion to science. The Church had geocentrism,the SovietsLysenkoism, and now the Multiculturalists have embraced blank-slatism.

Sperlich:

The defining attitude of science is disinterestedness, that of ideology
is commitment. ... The style of ideology relies on the power of moral sentiments and seeks to motivate engagement and
action.

The truth claims of Communism typically are supported
by tautologies, circularities, proof by definition, unverified premises and
auxiliary assumptions, dogmatic deductions, and, above all, by appeals to
authority.… Marx, at heart, was a moralist rather than a scientist,
and Marxism is a normative doctrine rather than an empirical theory.…(1)

In the West, from Darwin on, the leftist took himself to be the defender of science against superstition.

But today's blank-slatist, in a curious reversal, seems to believe that natural selection stops at
the neck. We may have differingmalaria resistance, lung capacity, or sprinting ability, but the brain ...well, the brain is surrounded by a magic forcefield which protects it from natural selection. It is therefore impossible that different ethnies could have different cognitive capacities, character traits, and so forth.

The American Anthropological Association hosted a conference in 2004 which prompted one blogger to exult:

Bad news for folks who are deeply invested in the popular conception of
race. The most recent national conference on the topic, attended by experts in
genetics, history and anthropology, reports that ‘race’ doesn’t exist. Again,
people in the know say that what most Americans think of as race is a cultural
construct, not supported by biology.

What to think, then, of the fact that bone marrow can only be donated
by someone of your racial group? Or that a criminal's race can now be identified from DNA left
at the crime scene?Acccording to speakers ata recent American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, acknowledging such truths may be termed'neo-racism.'

In psychometry, the implications of genetics and intelligence are so harrowing
to experts that they are now seriously asking, in true Stalinist style,

Comrade Lysenko would be proud.

Is all this science denialism really the fruit of true belief? Not necessarily. USSR expert Sperlich reminds us how it can infect even well-meaning
scientists:

It seems unlikely that many [Communist] intellectuals voluntarily sacrificed their
professional integrity. On the other hand, there were many material and
non-material rewards—most important,
perhaps, that their activities were taken seriously … To be taken seriously—or
at least seeming to be—is not a mean reward for intellectual endeavors.(1)

2) Ethnic
Denialism

Though a universalist religion ('there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus'), early Christianity didn't seem bothered with the ethnic question.As for the firstCommunists, they were sure that ethnic cleavage would soon give way to an international brotherhood.

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels had written: “The
working men have no country.” They could not have been more wrong; and they
were equally wrong when (in the same place) they wrote that “national
[ethnic] differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more
vanishing….” (1)

Rosa Luxemburg expressed her disappointment and grief:"Up to this time we
have cherished the belief that the interest of the peoples of all nations, that
the class interests of the proletariat ...cannot possibly come into conflict with one another. That
was the basis of our theory and practice, the soul of our agitation. Were we
mistaken in the cardinal point of our whole philosophy?" (1)

The Marxist saw a multi-ethnic proletarian brotherhood. What does today's anti-racist see?

Though he lauds ethnic diversity from morning to
night, he seems unable, to an almost pathological degree, to come to terms with
ethnic difference. That such groups might have varying abilities, tastes, or
character traits is as far-fetched to him as the idea that the moon is made of
green cheese.

Blank-slatism becomes a
sort of brain-eating virus, pushing us to obsess over all the ways in which
different ethnic groupsact so differently, and how we can put an end to this vexing state of affairs. Occam's razor (that ethnies have
different abilities and preferences, some of which are biologically rooted) is too tabooa concept for us to grasp.

This denial that ethnic groups are (1) real and (2) really different from
each other has led to scenarios that can seem too far-fetched to be true.

In the interest of 'fairness' (in response to federal pressure), for example, Minnesotans have stopped disciplining their melanin-enhanced students--to tragicomic results:

When the bell sounds the
start of class, students remain in the halls. Those who tire of lectures simply
stand up and leave. They hammer into rooms where they don't belong, inflicting
mischief and malice on their peers. Teachers call it "classroom invasion."
Instructors who break up fights get beaten in the process, thrown into
bookcases while trying to bar their doors.(Read the whole thing, TWCS promises you will not be sorry)

Whistleblowers in the Rotherham
sex grooming case were told to 'never,
ever' mention a Pakistani connection...

There are good reasons not
to identify the attackers by race. It's the newspaper's sound general policy
not to mention race in a story, whether about crime or anything else, unless it
has some clear relevance to the topic. ... My question to readers
accusing us of political correctness is: Why do you care so much about the
attackers' race [in these black-on-white attacks]? If you fear or dislike blacks, I suppose it would confirm your
prejudice. But
otherwise, it tells you nothing useful.

One is hard-pressed to imagine a similar reaction had the races been reversed.

EU leaders insist there is'no link' between the migrant crisis and New Year sex attacks in Cologne - and
vow to bring about an end to 'false accusations.'

One may wonder if all this
ethnic denialism is the result of true faith, or rather just a cynical attempt
to keep social peace? The
jury is still out.

Perhaps the king of modern ethnic denialism in the social sciences, Harvard's
Robert
Putnam,sat on his depressing data for
years trying to massage it to fit his will:

Putnam, a liberal academic
whose own values put him squarely in the pro-diversity camp … has struggled
with how to present his work. He gathered the initial raw data in 2000 and
issued a press release the following year outlining the results. He then spent
several years testing other possible explanations.

When he finally published a
detailed scholarly analysis, ... he faced criticism for straying from data into advocacy. His paper
argues strongly that the negative effects of diversity can be remedied, and
says history suggests that ethnic diversity may eventually fade as a sharp line
of social demarcation.

In his findings, Putnam writes
that those in more diverse communities tend to "distrust their neighbors,
regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to
expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give
less to charity and work on community projects less often,and to huddle unhappily in front of the
television. … thatvirtually all measures of civic
health are lower in more diverse settings."

We would be remiss not to
include John Derbyshire's reaction to Putnam's shenanigans, passed along byHenry Harpending:

'[Putnam's]
paper has a very curious structure. After a brief introduction (two pages),
there are three main sections, headed as follows:

The
Prospects and Benefits of Immigration and Ethnic Diversity (three pages)

Immigration and Diversity Foster Social Isolation (nineteen pages)

Becoming
Comfortable with Diversity (seven pages)

I’ve
had some mild amusement here at my desk trying to think up imaginary research
papers similarly structured. One for publication in a health journal, perhaps,
with three sections titled:

Health
benefits of drinking green tea

Green tea causes intestinal cancer

Making
the switch to green tea

...Social
science research in our universities cries out for a modern Jonathan Swift to
lampoon its absurdities.'

3) Purging Heretics

For the Church, the purge of heretics picked up steam in the late Middle
Ages. It was also, as we know,
widely practiced under Communism:

Out of power, communist parties support political
pluralism, as this clearly benefits them. In power, they discover that
political pluralism is counter-revolutionary. Religious leaders tend to
have the same conversion experiences. Calvin, for example, wrote to the
catholic kings of Europe, arguing that they should grant toleration to
Calvinist Protestantism. Attaining power quickly turned Calvin's mind: There
was no toleration of other religions in Calvinist-controlled Geneva.
(1)

Party and church claim rights that they will not, of
course, grant to others. Their own activities must in no way be restricted,
but those of their competitors must be suppressed. “Any idea or…behavior not in
line with Communist principles is ipso facto blasphemy, sacrilege, or heresy
depending on the nature of the deviance.” [Schein, 1961](1)

We
may scoff that there is no comparison between the brutal purges of Christian or Communist heretics of yesteryear and our wrongthinkers in the
West.

Butas it happens, the consequences of Wrongthink can indeed include loss of
employment, as we've seen from the travails of Rick Sanchez at CNN, Juan Williams at PBS, Larry Summers at Harvard, John Derbyshire at the National Review, or Pat Buchanan at MSNBC (victim groups offended, respectively: Jews,
Muslims, women, Afros, non-Whites).

No less than James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA,
after being caught in an honest moment ('all our social policies are based on
the fact that [Africans'] intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the
testing says not really'), just like Galileo was forced to recant:

"Science is no stranger
to controversy and I am not one to shy away from tackling issues, however,
difficult they might prove to be," he said. "I have had my share of
controversy, as many of you know. But I am mortified about what has
happened.

"More importantly, I cannot understand how I
could have said what I am quoted as having said. I can certainly understand
why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have. To
all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a
continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly.
That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there
is no scientific basis for such a belief."

Being fired from a private company is one thing; being
prosecuted or imprisoned is quite another. We in the U.S. are among the
last Western peoples to cling to genuinely free speech. Not so our Euro
brethren:

In 2010 French pundit Eric Zemmour was hauled before the Paris Procureur Général
for stating the following:

'French
immigrants are more closely monitored than others because most drug dealers are
blacks or Arabs... It's a fact.'

It is indeed a fact. This fact was considered 'incitation to racial hatred' and
cost Mr Zemmour 2000€, but not his job. (Thanks, some say, to his own group membership.)

The internet has become a
prime battleground in the fight against wrongthink. Governments such as Norway
and Germany
have promised to come down hard on heretics against the reigning ideology.

And in Communism as in Christianity, even the most fervent believers are not
safe from charges of heresy:

Early in the terror, it might have been relatively easy for Party
loyalists to feel insulatedin and by their
ideology. But as the victimizations extended to friends, family, and to
themselves, falsely accused Communist prisoners were faced with the emotional
problem of reconciling their loyalty to a Party that vilified them as disloyal ...(3)

In the same spirit, U.S. campuses have been roiled this yearasthe current crop of leftists begins to charge the previouscrop with heresy. Prominent Yale husband-and-wife profs were not spared in the merciless purge against their heretical position on Halloween costumes:

“I have disappointed you and
I’m really sorry,” Nicholas Christakis told about 100 students gathered in his
living room on Sunday ... Christakis said his encounter on Thursday with
students in the college’s courtyard, in which numerous black women upbraided
him for being inattentive to them, broke his heart.

“I thought that I had some
credibility with you, you know? I care so much about the same issues you care
about. I’ve spent my life taking care of these issues of injustice, of
poverty, of racism. I have the same beliefs that you do … I’m genuinely
sorry, and to have disappointed you. I’ve disappointed myself.”

* * *

The Russian Nicolas Berdyaev said:

Communism … wants to be a
religion itself, to take the place of Christianity. It professes to answer
the religious questions of the human soul and to give a meaning to life.
…Intolerance
and fanaticism always have a religious origin. No scientific, purely
intellectual theory can be so intolerant and fanatical, and communism is
exclusive as a religious faith is. (2)

Communism, we have now seen, is not the only progressive idea that can
take on the guise of religion, nor to be 'intolerant and fanatical.' The
Anti-racists / Multiculturalists of today confess their faith, spread their
gospel, deny science, and fight off heresy with a seemingly bottomless zeal.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they
go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by
one. ... Popular delusions began so early, spread so widely, and have lasted so
long, that instead of two or three volumes, fifty would scarcely suffice to
detail their history.

The popular delusion under which we now live--

that all ethnic groups have identical brains and so must behave the same way,

that high-trust and low-trust groups can live side-by-side happily,

that foreigners deserve more consideration than our own countrymen,

that the weakening or extinction of Whites will usher in a new peace,

--has so tightly gripped us, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that John McWhorter may well be right in calling it a 'religion.'Yes, the rightist is
more prone to religious belief than the leftist. But it seems clear that whether it is Marxism or Multiculturalism, the progressive brain has a tendency to be deeply drawn in by equalitarian fantasy.

A final word from Sperlich:

The psychologies of committed atheists and of the traditional faithful,
in any case, are not true opposites. For one, atheistic opponents of religion
“have often enough shown a temper which, psychologically considered, is
indistinguishable from religious zeal.” [W. James, 1958] For another,
“the great majority of the irreligious are not liberated from religious
behavior, from theologies and mythologies.” [Eliade, 1961] (1)

So, having seen what
it looks like when progressives get religion, next time we shall try to explore
the why.Thank
you as always for reading.

REFERENCES

(1) Sperlich, Peter W., Rotten Foundations: The Conceptual Basis of
the Marxist-Leninist Regimes of East Germany and Other Countries of the Soviet
Bloc, Westport: Praeger, 2002.

38 comments:

Irate eye rater
said...

on that note,it's interesting how often the multiculturalist answer to questions about why MENA and Subsaharan Africa are so stubbornly polka-dotted with violent shitholes is that the colonial powers drew the borders there with no regards for the facts on the ground and forced a bunch of different ethnic groups together. I thought you said multiculturalism was strength!

Fantastic article as well and very happy that you're back and good as ever.

In explaining why you should take a look at Paul Gottfried's 2002 book Multiculturalism and Politics of Guilt: Towards a Secular Theocracy. His interpretation has found much support in the alt right/paleo community and I'm sure you're familiar with it. Basically this multiculturalist anti-racism(we still need a better name for this new religion) is derivative from Christian and particularly protestant themes, hence it does better in more protestant countries. This is a good cultural explanation to go along with HBD Chick's bio-cultural explanation.

Indeed, the very large holes in their own arguments don't seem to slow down the true believers. Yours is a perfect example of faith blinding them to facts--like young earth creationists, no amount of contrary evidence can sway them from beliefs so deeply felt.

Sam--

Thank you, it's nice to know I still have some readers after such a long and unexpected pause!

I'm familiar with the multiculturalism-from-Christianity notion but I didn't know it came from Paul Gottfried. It's a fascinating idea and I've seen a lot of argument on both sides of the issue online. I suppose I need to get his book on my reading list!

that all ethnic groups have identical brains and so must behave the same way,"

I have noticed another delusion which is just as strong and explains why you can't discuss racial differences with most people. A lot or maybe even most people think all people within a race are also of equal ability, and one white kid will do just as well as another if given education of high quality. There is no such thing as difference in ability, the only people they accept have lower ability is those with Down syndrome or something similar.

Thank you, it's nice to know I still have some readers after such a long and unexpected pause!

I'm sure you have legions of loyal readers, MG, and all of us are happy you're back :)

Basically this multiculturalist anti-racism(we still need a better name for this new religion) is derivative from Christian and particularly protestant themes, hence it does better in more protestant countries.

Gottfried is an otherwise fine writer and thinker, but in this case it may be disingenuous of him to pin the blame for Western ethnomasochism entirely on Christianity, thereby absolving his own co-religionists of their considerable share of the blame.

But there's no doubt that 'multiculturalist anti-racism' has reached its apogee in the Protestant countries. Is this because of Protestantism per se, or because of the mainly Nordic and Germanic ethnolinguistic heritage of the Protestant countries? It's hard to tell because race, language and religion tend to run together in these nations.

Examples of ethnomasochism include openness to mass immigration of culturally alien peoples, acceptance of multiculturalism as the primary organizing principal of the state, and foreign aid per capita (i.e. throwing good money after bad at the Third World to no discernible effect).

The last is easiest to measure. The OECD lists "Official development assistance by country as a percentage of Gross National Income in 2013." Here are the top 20 sucker nations, with the historically Protestant nations marked with a (P):

Not surprisingly, all 17 of MG's Teutonic nations (not including tiny Liechtenstein) finish in the top 20. There are 13 Protestant nations in the top 20, 6 Catholic nations, and one Shinto/Buddhist (Japan).

The only two non-Teutonic majority Protestant countries in Europe (Estonia and Latvia) are listed separately on that Wiki page, both with lower percentages of per capita GNI in foreign aid than all of the Teutonic Protestant nations.

On top of the 6 Catholic nations in the top 20, there are a further 7 Catholic majority nations listed: Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. Of all 13 Catholic nations, the Teutonic ones finish #1, #2, #3, and #5.

So even though it can be difficult to unpack race, religion and language as causal effects of ethnomasochism, it looks to me like race aand language trump religion when it comes to foreign aid: Teutonic Protestant nations give more than non-Teutonic Protestant ones, and Teutonic Catholic nations are also more generous than non-Teutonic Catholic ones.

To confirm this, if we just compare Teutonic nations with one another, we find the Catholic nations have an average ranking of 9, with the Protestant nations averaging 9.69. With no real statistical difference there, we can conclude that Teutonic nations, whether Catholic or Protestant, give more than non-Teutonic nations, whatever their religion.

Anyway, it always seemed to me that Protestantism was the natural religious expression of the Northwest European peoples, reflecting their individualism and egalitarianism. As opposed to the more collectivist and hierarchical societies of Southern and Eastern Europe, who stuck with religious practices (Catholicism and Orthodoxy) that better reflected their social order.

Rather than a Deep State I think a Deep Culture is more accurate. It is SOP to blame "the Jews" for Multiculturalism because say, making Europe filled with Muslims and Africans would be "good for Jews." Exactly how, since Jews wisely avoid both Muslim and African nations is never argued save "chaos enables mastery" or some such. Begging the question why Jews don't run the ME or Africa.

There are in Western Europe essentially three main types of peoples, culturally. The Celts, disorganized, prone to violence, valuing individual freedom and often nature worshiping (see Yeats poetry) over pretty much everything else. The Romans, highly organized, highly hierarchical, given to bouts of corruption and civic virtue at turns, and deeply prideful of their rich cultural heritage. Neither Italians nor Frenchmen feel the lack of their own culture that they need say the Gabonese to enrich it. Then there are the Scandinavians, and Germans.

The way to think about THOSE White people are the Puritans, the Calvinists, the sort of high-conformity people that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about in The Scarlett Letter or Ibsen in his plays. [Scarlett Letter set in the Tidewater: Dimmesdale had a kid with a married woman, no one cared, the Yellow fever came and killed two of the three. The survivor lit out for the West.] Edvard Munch's the Scream is fairly indicative how ultra conformist Scandinavians are in practice.

And they are ultra conformist because as Hawthorne and Ibsen illustrate, status is fluid, the hierarchy is flat, and people can fall, quickly and rapidly. No Roman Noble could see his status fall rapidly for failing to enthusiastically publicly confess the religion of the day. Only gross cowardice in battle, indebtedness, or treason could do it. A Celt's status depended on his clan and respect for fighting; Scandinavians rapidly transitioned from such a Viking type into ultra conformity.

The ultra conformity comes IMHO from status anxiety, the fluidity and danger that failing to be conformist can bring to status in a society where status is everything. A Roman nobleman or French Count could care less if the merchants approved of him; their only fear was superiors moving against them. A Celt takes for granted the enmity of nearly everyone and status is basically nothing.

The kicker is that the Mass Consumer female-dominated marketplace amplifies every status conformity anxiety and increases Multiculti anti-Whitism; while peacetime erodes Celtic warrior/soldier value and industrialization obliterated the landed aristocracy.

Thought experiment: Western society constantly at War against a well armed Ottoman Empire, no consumer market, women have low status, and courage in battle or arms production and aristocratic noblesse oblige are the only ways to power and position in society. How "anti-racist" aka Anti-White would today's West be?

Re above, yes there are more complexities to White people than the three main groups. But it is useful I think to abstract them into three for main cultural traits which are observable. The French and Italians do have nobility, still, though not landed, and don't find themselves lacking in achievement. Germanics are utopian "flat" status hierarchies and Celts do like to fight and value their own liberty (they don't care one way or another about others).

When Bono showed up for a big show with U2 in Dublin, he slowly clapped his hands and said, "Every time I do that, a Child in Africa dies."

The English mystery writer P.D. James was on this back in 1986 in A Taste for Death.

One of the main characters (a young female detective) tries to make sense of religion.

"Annecroft Comprehensive certainly had a religion all right, fashionable and, in a school with twenty different nationalities, expedient. It was anti-racism. You soon learned you could get a way with any amount of insubordination, indolence or stupidity if you were sound on this essential doctrine. It struck her that it was like any other religion: it meant what you wanted it to mean; it was easy to learn, a few platitudes, myths and slogans; it was intolerant, it gave you the excuse for occasional selective aggression, and you could make a moral virtue out of despising the people you disliked. Best of all, it cost nothing..."

Very interesting on the ranking by % of development aid! That is one I had not thought of. I'm going to try to play with those numbers a little more.

Teutonic Protestant nations give more than non-Teutonic Protestant ones, and Teutonic Catholic nations are also more generous than non-Teutonic Catholic ones.

You know I have a bee in my bonnet about the Teutonics, and from the different rankings I've seen you pull up here and elsewhere, you and I are very much on the same page. And as I've said before, it's fascinating that one of the things that makes Teutonics' societies so attractive is also about to kill them.

Anyway, it always seemed to me that Protestantism was the natural religious expression of the Northwest European peoples, reflecting their individualism and egalitarianism. As opposed to the more collectivist and hierarchical societies of Southern and Eastern Europe,...

Yes. I know people just go in circles about this in a chicken-and-egg way, and that religions create behavioral feedback loops, and yes some religions are imposed from the outside-- but I very much agree with you on this point. Thanks as always for your thought-provoking comments.

Excellent piece! I especially liked this from Boutwell on the 'Bermuda Triangle of Science':

It will not matter how noble you think your motives are, if you [as an academic] factor in race as a variable, your actions are subject to impeachment, and your reputation may be sacrificed as a burnt offering to our new religion.

Any philosophy with an ism on the end of it is a religion, be it communism, atheism, hedonism, whatever. People need to fill the spiritual void in their lives with a replacement for God, even if it's something like atheism that rejects belief in Him.

And how far will it go? Will irredeemable "racists" and those who reject the Radiant Future of Antiracism and Equality be exterminated? Or just gradually squeezed out of existence? Bred out of existence? Forced to conform or starve? The new Dark Ages await...

Compelling as always, though I take exception to your implicit characterization of Inquisitions and the Galileo affair. Our popular views on medieval Europe in general derive largely from atrocious 19th-century scholarship.

Wow! Wow!!! I had the exact same epiphany after attending an "anti-racist workshop" some months ago. Thanks M.G. for putting your theory to digital paper.

I wrote about my experience here.Here's a quote from my write-up addressing "Margery", the workshop organizer and teacher, and the religious character of the "workshop" (read: Tent Revival)Margery is a motivated and practiced group speaker. She appropriates material that has been carefully prepared into lesson plans ("appropriates", ha ha!) by an intelligent, passionate, articulate author and professor, Shelly Tochluk. Look at this workshop of materials! Read Shelly's personal essay! It is very persuasive because it is entirely sincere. Shelly Tochluk is a devout progressive priestess and Margery is one of many devoted missionaries preaching the progressive feminist gospel.

And this new gospel is just that. It is my theory, shared by others, that aspects of progressivism are the acting out of a human instinct for social spiritual renewal taking place in a secular society. What were Christian missionaries in the Colonial Age, are the progressive do-gooders of the Post Modern Age. What was the chaotic melange of bible stories is replaced with a myopic summary of history and contradictory moral assertions.

At the same time, this does have the typical Leftist trappings of morally righteous smugness. Or at least, Margery does. She posts her shallow moral accusations often on Facebook. She wants anyone that will read to know she’s courageously chosen the right side of history.

Re: the Galileo affair, I understand some say it was more a political conflict than a theological one, and that the Church's resistance has been overstated. Is that what you're referring to? Or rather Paul Feyerabend who argued that Galileo's evidence wasn't strong enough to justify his own 'absolutism' on the matter? I'll admit I haven't studied the controversy deeply.

That was a funny transcript and I'm glad you shared it. The 'cultural appropriation' debate is especially silly since, as you point out at the end, it is endlessly circular. Keith Richards 'appropriated' blues music from Muddy Waters, but Muddy Waters didn't 'appropriate' the electric guitar from the Euro-Americans who invented it, heavens no. Anything ethnic Euros create is free for everyone; anything non-Euros create is theirs alone. But again, these are faith-based arguments and so of course don't stand up to scrutiny. In any case I'm glad you made it through the session unscathed!

What were Christian missionaries in the Colonial Age, are the progressive do-gooders of the Post Modern Age.

One of the things which make "Anti-Racism" so lunatic is that normally an ideology justifies the defense and even expansion of the territory of the group believing it. e.g., a Soviet communist supported communism because it provided privilege and power for himself and his comrades, and through the mechanism of international revolution expanded the territory in which communism would hold sway.

What is remarkable about Anti-Racism is that it justifies and motivates the contraction of the territory in which its believers inhabit. This is so whether we are talking about de-colonialization in Africa, or white flight in US suburbia, or the German government opening the frontiers to third world mass migration. White progressives have fewer and fewer places in which to practice their lifestyles. They end up being pushed out of their spaces, whether in a suburb whose schools mysteriously "go bad" or a public square in Cologne.

Presumably, at some point the third world hordes will have conquered and subjugated all Progressive territories, at which point Progressives will cease to exist as a viable force. The dilemma is that they are dragging down the rest of the white world with them.

James Burnham summed it up nicely in his epic tome, Suicide of the West: "Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide."

Traditional Christianity recognizes that all men are equally human and that God ordains boundaries for nations (éthnos). Act 17:26 “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation”

What is remarkable about Anti-Racism is that it justifies and motivates the contraction of the territory in which its believers inhabit.

I'm no professional historian, but this to me seems (1) right on the money and (2) without historical precedent. Yes, many peoples have made the mistake of letting in outsiders who then went on to overwhelm them, but to wish your own displacement by foreigners? To work hard every day towards this goal? What can one call it other than ethno-suicide?

Not that I totally agree with them, but I'm sympathetic to those who see a through-line from Christianity's self-sacrificing impulse to today's Anti-Racists. It almost seems like an extreme form of penance--'We've dominated & been the most successful for so long, now we must hand it all over to those not so fortunate as us.' That is, 'white privilege' ('white genetic privilege' in fact) has become a burden, being more able has become such a burden that the leftist's egalitarian soul pushes him to cut off his own feet to bring himself down to the size of everyone else. Like noblesse oblige on steroids.

The dilemma is that they are dragging down the rest of the white world with them.

A lot of people have been warning of civil conflict for some time, and I admit I didn't put too much stock in it, but I'm starting to think I'll eat my words. The non-ethno-suicidal contingent of Euros is not, I suspect, going to go gentle into that good night. I wouldn't have dreamed I'd see all this in my lifetime.

"A lot of people have been warning of civil conflict for some time, and I admit I didn't put too much stock in it, but I'm starting to think I'll eat my words. The non-ethno-suicidal contingent of Euros is not, I suspect, going to go gentle into that good night. I wouldn't have dreamed I'd see all this in my lifetime."

Well in MY case you're right. I have plenty of guns and I intend to use them!

One of your commenters said that we have to chose a different term that anti-racism. Well he/she is right because it's NOT anti-racism it's anti-White racism.

After many years (decades?) of practicing anti-racism light I finally realized that racism is natural. That anybody who's NOT a racist or is a racist in favor of ANOTHER race is just a big, dumb sucker! Your post is very well done. It's formative, sophisticated, knowledgeable, detailed but VERY bourgeois. The ONLY thing that counts in the end is the willingness to use violence. The founding (and expansion) of America is a perfect example. Whites would have gotten NOWHERE without the use of violence. And of course the country wouldn't even exist. I know that sophisticated/educated and (I assume) upper middle-class respectable people such as you and your commenters think this is all very Neanderthal but politeness will kill us. As I've told the people at VDare.com I always carry weapon when I leave my apartment and fully intend to use it whether it's illegal or not. Killing for want of a better word is good. Killing works. People of Color and their White Uncle Tom allies know it. And do it. So should we. So... let the disapproval begin! ;)

Your discussion of anti-racism as a progressive religion, perhaps a crusade, is very interesting and well written. I've learned a lot from your insights and analysis, and I shall make a point of reading the rest of your commentary when you publish it.

There is a distinction between religion and ideology. In my view, there are reasons to prefer understanding the anti-racism crusade as an ideological phenomenon.

A religion can be invented from ideological motives. This happened, for example, in the French Revolution after Christianity was proscribed, and when Robespierre launched the cult of the Supreme Being in order to channel the "spiritual impulses" of the nation in a more patriotic direction.

One thing you will always always see when these protests turn violent, is the "racaille" throwing tear gas canisters back at the cops.

Therefore: I have a very serious idea for an effective police counter-measure to deal with France's increasingly volatile CPF :

ANTI-RACAILLE PROPOSITION NUMBER ONE :Develop then Introduce a tear gas canister that contains a timer, a motion detector, and an explosive like the ones used to inflate airbags.

Here is how it would work:

After being conventionally fired into a crowd of rampaging CPFs, once inert it would arm itself and become volatile for a two minute period. So that when Abdul or Ali or Mohammed tries to kick it back into the police lines, it would explode.

I think this is a patentable concept, I am serious.

Do you happen to know any people in high places in France to whom the concept could be pitched? (I for one have a reasonably open communications line with Bernard Debré.)

ANTI-RACAILLE PROPOSITION NUMBER TWO : Since it is abundantly obvious that these protesters are becoming a LOT more brazen and violent - a result no doubt of supine French police engagement policies - I believe that a radical change in strategy is required.

My idea would be to use crisis actors in this policy change.

Here's how it would work:

The day before any large planned demonstration, the police would announce that the use of live ammo would be authorized if the police were to again come under attack with any kind of deadly weapon (and yes, a Parisian street pavé is most definitely a deadly weapon).

Here's the genius part behind this idea: during the actual demonstration, the authorities would have several plainclothes infiltrators in the crowd. When the police begin to fire what the crowd thinks is live ammo (they would in fact be using special high-decibel blanks) a couple of strategically-placed police crisis actors would fall to the ground pretending to be struck, maybe even using some Hollywood-style fake blood in a balloon.

This would immediately cause the violent protesters to drop their cobblestones and flee, scurrying back to their government-paid housing in the banlieues that they have turned into no-go zones. (Wouldn't it be great if we could call them "no-come" zones instead?).

Note: implemented correctly, this policy would only have to be used once or twice, before it sank in to the economy-sized brains of France's angry 18 to 30-year-old ghetto yoofs that whitey just ain't putting up with this shit any more.

Please also note : this policy shift (live ammo) would work best in the aftermath of a fatality among the police. It looks like there is a CRS officer (the one with the white hair unresponsive on the pavement) who might be about to offer this very scenario (he is between life and death right now, apparently).

.../...

MG : It is clear that something has to give, and pretty soon. And you and I both know what that means : Europeans have to re-take possession of their nations and their identity.

Please let me know what you think. I am serious when I say that I think these two concepts (one-way tear gas, crisis actors amid "live ammo) are not only doable, but necessary (especially the first one).

.../...

I will be in France again soon to do some bid-ness.

The best way to communicate with me is through the comments section in crimes of the times dot calm (please comment in a very old post for privacy).

Another indication of religion-like qualities might be found by observing the people who like to shock believers: Satanists and black metal musicians.

In France alone there is Varg Vikernes, a leader in the genre, and the BM group Peste Noire. Both are racist / white nationalist from what I gather. I guess that's the most effective way to blaspheme these days.

People are delusional. So why should a delusional (yet sincere) belief in a Supreme Being be privileged?

Privileging God-delusion is precisely what we are doing when we create laws against discrimination based on religion.

Why should it be OK to discriminate against Nazis, but not Islam (= Nazism + God).

If Hitler said Odin (his Supreme Being of choice) commanded him to slaughter lesser races, should we permit Nazism to be preached and spread indiscriminately under government protection as a "religion"?

Good to see you! Yes, the 'Nuit Debout' protestors have really turned on the charm offensive. Bobo Parisians are apparently at their wits' ends, their million-dollar digs becoming garbage dumps full of punks à chien.

Please let me know what you think. I am serious when I say that I think these two concepts (one-way tear gas, crisis actors amid "live ammo) are not only doable, but necessary (especially the first one).

As effective as they would no doubt be, the reason I think these could never work in France today is simple: Like in most Western countries, our leaders have lost their balls. This type of vandalism and attacking cops would have once been met with public hangings. But the political sphere is so deeply feminized at this point that appeasement and hand-wringing are the only solutions on offer. Short of a virile, no-bullshit Trump-like leader on this side of the pond, I don't see any end to the slow slide into anarcho-tyranny.

Sorry to be so pessimistic today! Hope your trip to France is fruitful. Don't forget that the SNCF is announcing regular rolling strikes soon to come, in reaction to Hollande's 49-3 pushing through of the labor law. So plan ahead.